FAYETTEVILLE-- Totem Pole Playhouse's board of director's sent the following letter to the editor regarding the status of the theater and the current show:

The Totem Pole Playhouse has been a wonderful and exciting part of summers at Caledonia for 63 years. This year continues to be no exception! In fact 2013 is the biggest, brightest and boldest season ever!

Even though Totem Pole has made remarkable strides in meeting its many financial obligations this year, the attendance for our final musicals, Barnum and Leader of the Pack will truly decide Totem Pole's future. With only four weeks remaining in the season, it is now crucial for Totem Pole to have "Sell-out" crowds!

True, Totem Pole is making progress but it may not be sufficient to carry the theater into the future. As Totem Pole supporters, please encourage your family and friends to attend the final two musicals at Totem Pole and experience marvelous live professional theater in the serene setting of Caledonia, before it is too late!

August 6 - August 18: Barnum, the three-time Tony-Award-Winning Musical is a family-friendly musical about the life and work of America's greatest showman, P.T. Barnum. This musical features a cast and orchestra of 31 professionals and is Totem Pole's biggest production ever! Ticket prices range from $39.50 - $69.50 because the production budget is close to $150,000.

August 20 - September 1: Leader of the Pack is a celebration of the sixties.

Advertisement

Doo-wop classics such as 'Be My Baby,' 'Chapel of Love,' 'Leader of the Pack,' "Da Doo Ron Ron" will have you dancing in the aisles. Since it has less production costs, ticket prices range from $19.50 - $49.50.

Additional information:

25% discounts for groups of 15 or more

50% discounts for students and children older than 5

TotemPolePlayhouse.org

(717) 352-2164

Thank you.

The Totem Pole Playhouse (Volunteer) Board of Director

David Black

William Gindlesperger

Maxine Gindlesperger

Mary Louise Lucas

Karl Shreiner

Rose Tripi

Dana Witt

ELSEWHERE:

A community theater south of Winchester, Va., closed this week after 52 years. The Wayside Theatre started in 1961 as a summer stock playhouse.
http://bit.ly/15Sh3ql
TOTEM POLE PLAYHOUSE BACKGROUND:

In early May, Public Opinion published this article about the 2013 season at Totem Pole Playhouse:

By JIM HOOK

@JimHookPO

The thrill of opening night will last all season long at Totem Pole Playhouse.

"This is the biggest, boldest, brightest season in our 63-year history," said Nathan Rotz, Totem Pole CEO. "Some nights are sold out already."

His splashy billing is subtitled: Ambitious and risky.

Even a non-profit, professional theater in the cool woods of Caledonia State Park is a business.

"In the past we did shows that people would call non-name shows, shows no one ever heard of," Artistic Director Ray Ficca said. "The cost to produce them was less. Attendance was way less. People wanted to know what they were going to see. Tony Award winners and musicals, that's what people prefer to see."

Totem Pole is giving its audience what they want. Its show budget for 2013 is $1.6 million, up from $300,000 in 2012.

Ficca has auditioned about 1,000 actors, a season record for the summer stock theater. Totem Pole is producing a record four musicals. The entire stage will spin for a comedy. Tap dancers are shuffling in from New York City.

"For the first time in the history of Totem Pole we're putting on this caliber of stuff," said William Gindlesperger, chairman of the Totem Pole board of directors. "'Barnum' is the most expensive show we will ever produce. We'll have bands going up and down the aisles. High wire acts, cyclists, sword eaters. We've got it all. We believe there will be 50 actors."

Ficca started assembling Totem Pole's own high-wire act just six months ago, about a year less than he has for a normal season.

The 2013 season almost didn't get off the ground.

"There was a lot of discussion about throwing in the towel," Gindlesperger said. "It was not taken lightly."

The theater had reached the limit on its line of credit, he said. Its endowment was all but spent. The board developed a "sophisticated business plan" to produce events that can't be seen anywhere but New York City. The board asked supporters for $250,000 in seed money and got more than $330,000.

The board also hiked ticket prices, and raised the curtain on the theater's financial drama.

"So far we are not wrong," Gindlesperger said. "We're ahead of projections. We are far ahead of any of our sales in the past five years."

"Things are looking good so far," said Mary Louise Lucas, a board member who heads a group of theater volunteers. "We've already made plans for next year."

Backstage carpenters, who strike one theater set and build another, will tell you it's just a matter of hard work and staying on your toes.

"We only have about 30 hours to replace the set every other week," said Daphne Blair, patron experience manager. "Some people do pull an all-nighter. Some get two or three hours of sleep before they're back at it again."

"We have 'strike day' volunteers prepare meals for the actors and back stage crew," Lucas said. "They work until they get it done."

The payoff is sweet.

"Opening night of every show is my favorite night to be here," Blair said. "Is it all going to come together? You see the smiles on the faces. You see it all comes together."

Impact

The Totem Pole season has the potential of creating more than 26,000 nights on the town for local patrons and tour buses. A couple's evening out is likely to include dinner. A bus tour will include a stop or two at local shops and attractions.

"Totem Pole is in itself an economic driver in the tourism industry," said L. Michael Ross, president of the Franklin County Area Development Corporation. "As an amenity it's important to the perception of the quality of life for companies looking to locate of expand. It's a big deal."

The theater employs four or five people year round, but at one time or another has 200 people on its payroll, according to Gindlesperger. About 100 work the entire season.

Many of them are college students and interns working 12- to 15-hour days backstage, Rotz said.

Rotz got his start in the business world 20 years ago at Totem Pole when the Carl Schurr hired him right out of high school for the lighting crew. Rotz went on to college and to start several local businesses. He said Totem Pole offered him, and still offers teen-agers, a place to learn what it takes to operate a business. They learn "to think on their feet very quickly and come up with creative solutions."

Totem Pole also relies heavily on volunteers, most of them retirees and of them comfortable working behind the scenes.

The Friends of Totem Pole, a group of more than 60 volunteers, greet buses, help with concessions, do office work and mailings, take tickets and usher guests to their seats. An annual $25 fee gets the volunteer a shirt, a place at the annual summer picnic and an occasional seat at a show.
"Everyone out here is doing it for the love of the theater," Rotz said. "They're motivated to keep this caliber of theater in our community."

Totem Pole connects

Actors move in for a couple of weeks and strike up friendships.

Lucas has kept a life-long relationship going with the Putch family, the first family of Totem Pole. She first attended a Totem Pole performance with her parents when she was nine years old. As a teen-ager she worked as a house manager. Her two daughters later worked there.

"You renew friendships in the summer," Lucas said. "It goes on and on. We try to keep that going because I think that's what makes Totem Pole different than other theaters in the area."

Actors leave their city apartments and live in another community for a couple of weeks in summer.

"It's almost like a family," said Maria Somma, communications director for Actors' Equity Association in New York. "If they go back, they are treated like stars. They become recognizable. The community takes ownership of these actors. Actors love going back. It's like going back to a second home."

The Equity Association represents actors and stage managers on Broadway. Totem Pole is a union shop.

"Totem Pole has been part of the equity family for a long time," Somma said. "It's one of the theaters where actors want to audition. It's become an anchor for economic development stability and growth."

Beyond getting employment credit for health insurance benefits, actors seek summer employment for the good of their souls, she said.
"It s gives them a chance to play roles they might not otherwise get a chance to do," Somma said. "Summer stock gives them the opportunity to stretch."

Besides getting paid, actors also must maintain their reputations, Ficca said. From its early days Totem Pole was known as the Cadillac of summer theater.

"We like to say we are doing regional theater work on a summer stock schedule," he said.

Community, semi-professional and high school theater all have a role in theater, according to Gindlesperger.

"All three are wonderful enterprises, but they are not professional," he said. "They are hobbyists. They all have jobs (outside the theater) and come into the theater because it's fun. They call it community theater because it is. Totem Pole is the only professional theater in our area."

Ficca said that Totem Pole Playhouse is one of fewer than 10 professional summer stock theaters in the U.S. There were 150 a half century ago.
Theater acting jobs have been harder to come by in recent years and more sporadic, according to the Equity Association's most recent theatrical season report.

Totem Pole supporters defend the live theater and its future in the days of electronic and social media.

"The audience is an active participant in the experience," Ficca said. "It's more like a sporting event than a movie. If it's a comedy, and they don't laugh.... That's the best way I can explain audience participation. It's a tradition that after a song, the audience applauds. That's how they participate. As an actor you can tell where they like the show. A movie can't feel your energy when you're watching it. No two (live performances) are exactly the same."

Image

Ten years ago the Totem Pole board of directors became its production company. Productions became more and more cautious under the direction of 24 directors.

The board also decided to reduce ticket prices to encourage attendance, but price did not make up for the small productions, according to Gindlesperger. Ficca did the best he could, but the house typically was less than half full.

"Not only were the shows not interesting, they didn't have the pizzazz of a large cast," Gindlesperger said.

The board was streamlined to seven members, five of them entrepreneurs with a knack for taking risks. The board turned operations over to a small staff.

"Boards do not run businesses," Gindlesperger said. "Totem Pole board tried, and you can't do it with volunteers. Board sets policy, direction, can offer advice and oversight."

The theater had maxed out its line of credit and mortgaged both houses where actors stay, he said.

"The theater was closing. It hit the wall," Gindlesperger said. "We didn't have the cash flow to line up shows. There was no money to reopen."

The earlier board also had subsidized ticket prices with nearly $700,000 of the theater's endowment in hopes that things would turn around in time, according to Gindlesperger.

"We don't have any money to underwrite the tickets," he said. "For all intents and purposes, the endowment is gone. We need to build the endowment again. We're just trying to get through this year."

Gindlesperger defends the new board's decision to raise ticket prices. Less than 5 percent of the audience had said: Don't raise ticket prices.
"To do something right, you can't have someone else pay for your ticket," he said. "This isn't about helping a child to eat. We need to have the arts. We need professional arts. It improves the quality of life for everyone."

The average ticket price is $45 a show this year, up $9 from last year. Ticket prices for a show this year are determined by the cost of that production and 75 percent attendance. A patron can spend the same amount on tickets this year and still get a chair, but farther back in the 389-seat house. Season tickets also held their value as the theater expanded to 10 productions.

Student tickets are half price.

"We want to build an audience for the future," Gindlesperger said. "We want kids to see wholesome entertainment more than instant gratification."
Totem Pole has surveyed its patrons at season's end for the past several years. They asked for well-known plays with bigger casts.

The number of ushers is doubled. They will give directions in the parking lot or park a patron's car. People will be taken to their seats.

"That's the most important thing you sell -- quality and service," Gindlesperger said. "By service we mean giving people their money's worth, giving people respect for buying a ticket. The theater has never done that. Treat people with respect and care. That's big. That's important. We want to be an experience beyond the theater. It has to be holistic."

Outside entertainment, such as circus acts before Barnum, will greet patrons arriving early for a performance, he said. The board also wants a covered area where refreshments can be served, better restrooms, a better walkway and a place where food can be catered to groups hours before the show.

"We in the worst way want to bring back the Christmas Carol," Gindlesperger said. "The minimum cost to build the set is $300,000. The old set is too dangerous to climb on any more."

Totem Pole had dreams eight years ago, but nothing on paper, Lucas said.

"Now we have blueprints," she said.

If quality theater sparkles and holds an audience spellbound, as Gindlesperger says -- Totem Pole has hit its opening mark.

"If it isn't successful, nothing else could be done," he said. "People are responding, even though they don't know what to expect."

______

Jim Hook can be reached at 717-262-4759 and jhook@publicopinionnews.com.

Big names

Totem Pole Playhouse will have well-known names this season.

Sally Struthers, who played Edith Bunker's daughter on All in the Family, stars in the one-woman show "Simply: Sally Struthers," May 8 to 12.